


No Secrets

by DesertRaven



Series: Hope is a Dangerous Thing [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Breeding Kink, CW: Zenos, F/M, Honestly it wouldn’t be my work without angst, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Look I’ve probably missed tags please use caution, Possessive Behavior, Unplanned Pregnancy, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:28:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29642325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertRaven/pseuds/DesertRaven
Summary: “How?”“Zenos yae Galvus. I know I do not need to explain to you where babies come from.”
Relationships: Zenos yae Galvus/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Series: Hope is a Dangerous Thing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2041852
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	No Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Possibly some squicky consent here. This is an established relationship but uh... Zenos gonna Zenos.

The visits to Garlemald had become a regular occurrence, one that the Warrior did not enjoy but suffered anyway for the sake of keeping an eye on the Ascians, and for the sake of her love for Zenos. He didn’t enjoy the trip any more than she did. But whatever the Ascians’ plans, the peace she had built continued. The beast tribes still attempted their summonings, but they were fewer and farther between without the threat of the Empire. She rarely had occasion to be called into battle, though she still regularly sparred and hunted with Zenos. They had both grown rusty in peace, but she found that neither of them seemed to mind.

He had been called into a meeting with Varis that morning, leaving her to wander the halls of the royal residences unaccompanied. On one of the first trips here, she had found what appeared to be a library, one of the few rooms she could stand to be in, other than her own quarters. One wall was a two-floor high window that looked into an inner courtyard, the remaining walls contained shelves and shelves of books on every conceivable topic. There were other items scattered amongst the books, statuettes, ceremonial weapons, a curious crystal that glowed faintly, reminding her of the soul crystals she used to channel her aether. The whole thing was golds, blacks, woods and marbles. The room did not feel Garlean. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that these were the trophies of conquest, nor who this room might have belonged to.

“I always did like this room.”

The voice from the doorway made her jump, scrambling to her feet and whipping around to face Emet-Selch. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end despite the heat from the roaring hearth, and the room felt somehow darker despite the rare sunlight streaming in through the wall of glass.

“Can I help you?”

He stepped into the room in that lazy, but measured, stride of his, glancing around at the shelves with something that almost looks like nostalgia.

“I could ask you the same, hero. It is my private study, you know.”

Emperor Solus’s study. But they were one and the same from everything she’d gathered. Emet-Selch had been Solus Galvus for so long that she doubted anyone would have remembered the man as he was before becoming an Ascian’s pawn. Although her stomach was turning, suddenly disgusted with the place, she made a show of returning the books to their proper places; it meant turning her back to him, but she had to show she wasn’t afraid to have him there.

A thoughtful, almost curious hum from the Ascian pulled her attention away from her task and she turned to look at him.

“Have you told my fool of a great grandson yet?”

Her brows furrowed in confusion. Told him what? Whatever game the Ascian was playing, she didn’t like it. She wanted to leave and go back to her room, but he was between her and the door and she wasn’t reckless enough to take him on in a fight unarmed.

“Ohhh.” A slow smile spread across his face, making him look somehow more threatening. “You don’t know, either. Well, I suppose it does take some time to notice these things.”

She couldn’t get her head around his cryptic words. He seemed to think he had discovered something that she didn’t know. Something that would have affected both her and Zenos. She couldn’t, for the life of her, put the pieces together. Emet-Selch waved his hand dismissively.

“No matter, he would hardly be the first Galvus with a savage bastard.”

The blood drained from her face. No, it wasn’t possible. It was difficult enough for Xaela to conceive, unheard of for it to be with the other races. And besides that, she had been taking preventive measures. She struggled to think back, remember when her last cycle was. Her head was spinning.

“Oh dear, I’ve upset you.”

A gentle hand on her arm guided her back into one of the chairs beside the fireplace, and she didn’t even protest when a glass was pressed into her hand. She drank without thinking, and was relieved to find it was water. 

“You are always welcome in here, my dear. I will leave you to it.”

Her mind whirled, unable to find answers to any of the questions she asked herself. What would Zenos say? How could she possibly protect anyone if she was… she couldn’t even complete the thought. What was she going to do?

———

The more irritated Zenos became, the longer Varis kept him in meetings. A lesson he should have learned long ago, a temper he should have long outgrown. But his father always managed to pull it out of him. He did not take notice of the staff scattering from his path, not even the medicus coming from the direction of his chambers.

She was pacing when he opened the door, looking every bit like a caged beast. Looking exactly like he felt. Garlemald was not good for either of them. Her eyes were red, puffy. Like she had been crying. His beast did not cry.

“What is it?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Never one to pull her punches. Of course she wouldn’t dance around the question. And all he could do for long moments was stare blankly at her. They had discussed the possibility, and it shouldn’t have been. Between their incompatibility and her preventive measures… 

“How?”

If looks could kill.

“Zenos yae Galvus. I know I do not need to explain to you where babies come from.”

She resumed her pacing, wearing a path in the plush rug, and he lapsed into silence again. His contentious, resentful relationship with his father, and in turn Varis’s relationship with Solus, occupied his thoughts. He had no foundation upon which to build fatherhood. The only thing he had ever cared for, ever loved, was in front of him. Carrying his child.

He could, would, had to be better. For her, for them.

“... surgeons in Ul’dah for this sort of thing…”

He caught the tail end of her muttering and grabbed her shoulder to stop her.

“What are you saying?”

“I can’t - We can’t…”

Emotions ran too fast and too strong for him to begin to process them. Anger. Hurt. It was unplanned, unexpected, but to think that she wouldn’t want this… Was his love, their love, not enough? He could see the same war in her eyes, and under it all, fear.

“Who would stop us?”

She yanked out of his grasp, squaring her shoulders and glaring up at him.

“You are the only direct heir to the throne, Prince Zenos,” she spit the title at him. “You will eventually have to marry, have children. And what will become of me then? Shuffled off to some province to hide your bastard? Garlemald, your father—”

“I care not what they think.”

“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it?” She laughed bitterly, and started to turn away from him. Something in him snapped, his hand shooting out to grab her, fingers crushing into her jaw hard enough to make her wince, though the fire in her eyes did not dim.

She dug her nails into his arm, teeth bared at him. “Zenos…”

Somewhere in him there remained some trace of the man he had become for her, but all he could feel in the moment was the drive to claim her, force her to bend to his will. She didn’t fight him when he backed her into the bedroom, not until the backs of her knees hit the bed. He didn’t feel any of it, not the vicious bite of her nails into his arms, or the way she yanked at his hair. When he caught her wrists, trapping them in one hand, she got one well-placed knee into his thigh. None of it deterred him. She was his, and he would remind her of it.

She was feral, snarling like a caught animal even as he pinned her to the bed with a hand between her shoulders, free hand yanking down her pants hard enough that the fabric tore in his grip. He wasn’t surprised to find her already soaked, just as she wouldn’t have been surprised to find him hard.

“Look at you.” He shoved two fingers into her roughly and she howled, kicking back at him and thrashing under his hold. Snarling turned to gasping as he drove into her, her fight draining as she tried to push back against him. Seeking more, always more. “Panting like a bitch in heat. So desperate for my cock.”

“Stop talking and fuck me.”

“As my beast commands.”

She tucked her knees under her as he freed himself from the confines of his pants, lining up with her entrance and burying himself in her with one brutal thrust.

“You are mine.” His words punctuated with sharp snaps of his hips, her cries loud enough to be heard in the halls outside their rooms. “If I wish to breed you like the beast that you are, I will do so. And you will thank me for it.”

Her voice seemed to have escaped her, reduced to whimpers as he fucked her. His own thoughts had narrowed to the primal need to claim, breed. He would see her swell with his child. She screamed his name as she came, the pulse of her cunt enough to pull him with her, spending himself as deeply as she could take him.

The tension in both of them bled out with their release. He withdrew from her to fall onto the bed, pulling her into his arms as he went. Her tears were falling again when she met his eyes.

_His_. His love, his beast, the mother of his child. Though the nearly violent need to lay claim to her had ebbed, the possessive feelings had not.

“I would burn this Empire to ash before I would lose you.”

She remained silent for a long time, until her tears slowed and stopped.

“I’m scared, Zenos.”

He didn’t know how to tell her that he was, too. His hand trailed down her side to the still-flat plane of her stomach. Not as muscular as it had once been, but they had both slowed in the time since their battle in Ala Mhigo. What would it be like to watch her body change, to see her grow heavy with child, to hold their baby in his arms?

“What if I can’t… what if something happens?”

He pressed her onto her back, kissing down her chest to her stomach.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You can’t promise that.”

He rested his head on her stomach and she stroked her fingers through his hair. Would it look like him? Garlean blood was strong, but all the half-blood Garleans he had ever heard of had been Hyur or Elezen. There was no telling what might happen with her. He almost snorted at the thought of having an heir with horns and a tail, seating a half-beast on the throne.

He sat up suddenly, words coming out before he’d even had time to consider them. “Marry me.”

Her eyes widened in shock, mouth dropped open. Then she shoved his chest and looked away from him. “Don’t— you can’t joke about these things, Zenos.”

His hand on her cheek turned her back. “You said it yourself. I will have to marry, produce heirs… I would accept no other by my side.”

“And what will you do when your father refuses?”

Her doubt was infuriating. As though there was anything he would not give up. His titles, the throne, Garlemald. All of it meaningless. Nothing mattered except her, them.

“Then we leave. Go wherever we want. You hate it here.” He meant it, but he could see the hesitation in her eyes. “Say yes.”

“You are a damn fool, Zenos yae Galvus.” She sat up and pulled him to her with her hands on his jaw, kissed him softly. “I love you. Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Join me, and all the lovely people who make these fics possible, on Discord! [Emet-Selch’s Wholesomely Debauched and Enabling Book Club](https://discord.gg/K9PW9qv)


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